Ghostapo: Difference between revisions
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[[Draco in Leather Pants|With few exceptions]], pretty much [[Acceptable Targets|everyone agrees]] that the Nazis were very, '''very''' bad, what with the socio-political repression, the institutionalized racialist policies, the wars of aggression against their neighbors, the mass imprisonment and murder of dissidents and undesirables, and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|forever ruining the reputation of eugenics and social Darwinism as serious academic disciplines]]. So, how do you make [[Those Wacky Nazis]] even more intimidating? Why, by giving them magic power and [[Eldritch Abomination]] allies, of course!
This is actually more plausible than it sounds. Nazism's roots are arguably traceable to an [[wikipedia:Category:Nazism and occultism|occult]] group called the [[wikipedia:Thule Society|Thule Society]], depending on which rumors you listen to, and a lot of the senior Nazis (including Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS) were intensely interested in the occult. Culturally the country was hip-deep in Teutonic tradition: some senior Nazis apparently wanted to gradually abolish German Christianity in favor of Norse gods after the war (the majority of them just wanted the state to absorb all the qualities of a religion instead), while in direct contradiction to the above (but hey, they're Nazis!), [[Adolf Hitler]] tried to get his hands on the [[Public Domain Artifact|Spear of Destiny]].
One other benefit is that within your fantastical world, the true horrors of the Third Reich can "keep up" with your everyday fantastical horrors, rather than being overshadowed. The downside is that it can be a bit, well, silly, which can diminish the impact of the factual events.
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== Anime and Manga ==
* The ''[[Hellsing]]: Ultimate'' [[OVA
* Pretty much the entire plot of Part 2 of ''[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure]]''. Nazis resurrect four ancient vampires known as the Pillar Men, who begin to wreak havoc.
* The first season of ''[[Weiss Kreuz]]'' has a pack of enemies called the SS whose leaders are obvious Nazi analogues. Their evil plot revolves around the occult powers of black magic and the main character's sister.
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== [[Comic Books]] ==
* ''[[Hellboy (comics)|Hellboy]]''. The titular demon was summoned to Earth by Nazi occultists, and the plans of the Third Reich regularly play upon the plot, in both the comic books and the films. President Truman personally sent the [[BPRD]] to Berlin in 1946 to catalog all the data pertaining to the Nazis' obsession with the occult - on account of American soldiers uncovering scores of... ''bizarre'' things since the city fell.
** Hoo, ''Hellboy'': [[Jet Pack
** In a ''[[The Savage Dragon]]'' crossover with ''Hellboy'', it was discovered that the [[Brain In a Jar|brain]] used by Brainiape, a [[Everything's Better with Monkeys|gorilla]] with a powerful [[Psychic Powers|psychic brain]], was none other than Hitler's.
** When the brain leaped up and started walking, that's when the heroes called it...
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* In the [[Marvel Universe]], Hitler was [[Cloning Blues|cloned multiple times]] by a geneticist named Arnim Zola and repeatedly [[Body Surf|transferred his mind from body to body]]. In most of these bodies, he called himself the "Hate-Monger", wielded a "hate ray" that could [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|manipulate people's emotions]], and wore a costume that looked something like a purple version of the Klan's getup. Marvel eventually tried to distance themselves from the Hate-Monger by having him [[Sealed Evil in a Can|transfer his mind]] into a [[Artifact of Doom|Cosmic Cube]] that didn't actually work. [[Death Is Cheap|This being comics]], even Hitler couldn't stay dead forever, though.... Marvel has also raised the question of whether this is "really Hitler" or "just a mental copy of Hitler", which somehow never comes up when it's someone else using Zola's process (such as Zola himself).
* ''[[Danger Girl]]'' has The Hammer, a terrorist group led by a Nazi war criminal, who collect magical artifacts in order to revive an ancient [[Atlantis|Atlantean]] "Aryan superman". Of course, when said being actually appears, he kills most of them.
* In the [[Elseworld
** The comic also offered a similar [[Post-Crisis]] explanation for why none of the heroes tried to kill
* Even ''[[Fables]]'' has to get in on the action. One flashback issue told of Bigby Wolf as a commando in WWII, stopping the Nazis for creating an army of [[Frankenstein's Monster]] and [[Our Werewolves Are Different|Werewolf]] soldiers.
** Which raises some serious questions about the quality of their [[Masquerade]].
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** ''[[Dead Snow]]'' seems to be a [[Spiritual Successor]] to the 1977 film ''[[Shock Waves]]''. Other films with Zombie Nazis include Jesse Franco's ''[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086486/ Oasis of the Zombies]'' (1983), Jean Rollins' ''[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081027/ Zombie Lake]'' (also 1983, and produced by the same folks who did ''Oasis''), and the obscure ''[http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0082815/ Night of the Zombies]'' (1981).
* ''[[Bulletproof Monk]]'s'' main villains are a bunch of Nazis trying to gain immortality through ancient magic.
* And of course, [[The Film of the Book|the movie adaptation of]] ''[[Hellboy (film)|Hellboy]].'' See above. There's also Kroenen, previously a Nazi assassin and now the [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|undead servant of Rasputin]]
{{quote|'''Professor Broom:''' 1958, the Occult Wars finally come to an end with the death of Adolf Hitler.
'''John Myers:''' 1945, you mean.
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* In ''Crimson Rivers II: Angels of the Apocalypse'', there are some French (Neo-)Nazi monks trying to find a medieval artifact to help them build a new, pure France.
* This may fall partially under tech rather than magic, but ''[[Outpost]]'' has a mercenary team of ex-Royal Marines trying to hold off the seemingly immortal bodies of resurrected SS. There's a half-century old machine within the bunker they were originally hired to search, and it's revealed to have the power to negate the Nazis' immortality when activated. The mercenaries turn it on {{spoiler|only for it to promptly break down, the last of the mercenaries (the captain) to die holding the Nazis off, and the scientist to try and escape through the ventilation shafts only to be met by the Nazis' commanding officer and a cut-to-black death.}}
* This is how the HYDRA rises to power in ''[[Captain America: The First Avenger|Captain America the First Avenger]]''. Originally just a sort of black ops division for the Nazi forces, when they find the Tesseract (a.k.a. Cosmic Cube) in Norway things take a drastic turn as they develop [[Stupid Jetpack Hitler|hyper-advanced weapons systems]] like [[Fricking Laser Beams]] that can instantly vaporize their targets or all the [[Cool Plane
* Parodied in ''[[Night Train to Munich]]:'' John Fredericks: Occultist and Ophthalmic Surgeon
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* In the Kaiju Deconstruction novel that is ''[[Shambling Towards Hiroshima]]'', it is mentioned that the Nazis also were trying to breed giant fire-breathing reptiles, but thankfully they were unable to do so.
* [[Michael Moorcock]] has featured Nazis messing with the occult in at least two of his novels, ''The Dragon in the Sword'' and ''The Dreamthief's Daughter''. In the former, the protagonists, while looking for the Holy Grail, meet Hitler, Goering and Goebbels conducting a pagan summoning ceremony. They manage, without really trying, to change the course of the war by giving the trio a "sign" that they should invade Russia before inventing the atomic bomb. In the latter, the Nazis want the protagonist's family sword because they believe {{spoiler|correctly}} that it is a mystic artifact of cosmic significance. The climax of the book features Hitler and his chief stooges, er, conducting a pagan summoning ceremony, where they get the bejeezus scared out of them by [[Heroic Albino|Elric]] [[Badass|of Melnibone]]. Elric and the protagonist then lead an army of dragons to save Britain from the Luftwaffe. Both instances are a massive [[Take That]], with the protagonists dwelling extensively on what sad little men the senior Nazis are.
* In ''[[Illuminatus]]!'', the Holocaust is part of a ritual whose purpose is to cause Hitler and his immediate circle to ascend to [[Physical God
** As part of the same plan, the heroes have to stop a squadron of zombie SS commandos from attacking a Woodstock-like music festival in Germany, which is part of the Illuminati's plan to trigger World War Three.
* The novel/ comic book series ''Fiends of the Western Front'' has Hitler cut a [[Deal with the Devil|deal with Dracula]]; the vamps help Germany win the war, and they get all the commies, wounded, and POW's they can eat.
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* Noticeably averted in the [[Old World of Darkness]]; after a few missteps in 1st Edition, White Wolf came to think that making World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust the master work of any one type of supernatural critter would undermine the utter inhumanity of it. So, if supernatural creatures were involved, they were just picking at the sides of the suffering or trying to stop it (Vampires need human "cattle" to survive, [[I Was Just Passing Through|so stopping them from being wiped out is in their best interests]]), and not the grand architects of genocide. This made it pretty much the only event in the WoD's history that ''wasn't'' entirely due to some NPC's master plan.
* The [[New World of Darkness]] game ''[[Hunter: The Vigil]]'' subverts this with the Loyalists of Thule, made up of the remnants of the aforementioned Thule Society. Not only were they driven out of Germany after the Nazi Party came to power, but they became so horrified by what happened thereafter that they swore to use their occult knowledge to protect mankind from other horrors.
** ''[[Vampire: The Requiem]]'' has another subversion with the Dragolescu [[Prestige Class|bloodline]], a group of vampires capable of control over ghosts. Their founder was a... bit ''too'' enamored with Hitler, but never had any direct interaction with the
* In the ''[[GURPS]] Infinite Worlds'' setting, "SS Raven Division" are amongst the major villains, using psychic/mystic world-jumping to infiltrate other worlds, from Reich-5, an [[Alternate Universe]] where the Nazis won the war.
** ''[[GURPS]]'' also published ''Weird War II'', which discusses and goes into detail ''everything discussed under this trope'' and how to use, mix, and blend them together to make a customized Weird Alternate [[WW 2]] for your role playing pleasure.
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* The ''[[Witchcraft]]'' setting uses this trope where the Nazis tried to use Cosmic Horrors to win the War.
* The ''[[Scion]]'' companion has a setting where you can play as a scion involved in WWII. Hitler is a titan sponsored Scion but much of the war is Loki's fault, although exactly how much is not entirely clear.
* ''[[Delta Green]]'' features the Karotechia, the bare remnants of Hitler's occult program hiding out in South America. They have a perfect example of the Ubermensch (thanks to his discovery of a cannibal tribe's immortality rituals) and Hitler's third book, ''Mein Triumph''
* In the ''Nephilim'' RPG series, Thule Society still exists and is a prominent faction generally hostile to the eponymous Nephilim. The Society is a mix of real-life Thule Gesselschaft and Ahnenerbe with magicians and alchemists added for a good measure.
* The ''Tannhäuser'' board game has Obscura Korps, basically the SS with psionic / magical / demonic powers. The Reich itself, however, is in fact [[Imperial Germany]], led by the Kaiser, and the war being fought is the [[World War One|Great War]].
* In the sixth edition ''[[Champions]] Universe'' source book, it were the mystic energies released by a backfiring ritual attempted by Nazi mystics that ushered in the age of modern superhumans on May
* A throwaway reference in the small-press RPG ''Shattered Dreams'' inverts this trope, suggesting that Hitler's global agenda was foisted on him by the game's nightmare-haunting monsters, the Vacyg, who ''made'' a run-of-the-mill tinpot dictator into a [[Complete Monster]] [[For the Evulz]].
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*** The "Hitler Ghosts" are puppets that move around on strings, with Hitler's face on them. They're entirely mechanical, so only ''Spear of Destiny'' has the real deal (the suspiciously [[Satan]]-like Angel of Death and ''literal'' ghosts).
* In the iPhone Wolfenstien RPG, the Nazi's attempt to stop BJ's assault by summoning the final boss The Guardian Of Doom. After BJ blows his arm and leg off, the demon vows to get revenge on his descendants. Flash forward a few centuries, and Doomguy is fighting the Cyber Demon!
* ''[[Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis]]'' features [[Herr Doktor]] [[Meaningful Name|Hans]] [[Ubermensch|Ubermann]] and Klaus Kerner, a Gestapo member of the Thule society himself. They are trying to find the source of [[Orichalcum]], a mystic radioactive substance capable of powering [[Forgotten Superweapon
* The first ''[[Blood Rayne]]'' game is loaded with Nazi occultists, [[Punk Punk|dieselpunk]] mecha, and [[The Baroness|leather-clad Aryan temptresses armed with sharp objects]]. Yes, there were [[Stupid Jetpack Hitler|jetpack-using Nazis]].
* The Fifth Column, one of the original villain groups in ''[[City of Heroes]]'', were Nazis who'd been underground in the US since being sent there to strike from within during World War II. A mid-level story arc had the Fifth Column as modern allies for a Nazi soldier who time-traveled to 21st century [[No Communities Were Harmed|Paragon City]] to learn about Allied plans during World War II and bring the information back to ensure the victory of the Axis. At the higher levels, there were [[Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke|genetically-engineered]] [[Our Vampires Are Different|vampires]] and [[Our Werewolves Are Different|werewolves]] among their ranks, complete with a vampiric archvillain named Nosferatu.
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